Strong Justice

by Jon Land

  “Paz,” he said, running a thick finger along the glass guarding the image of the man captured within. Earl Strong was tall and lean, not carrying a lot of muscle on his frame but no fat Paz could see either. Everything about him, from his boots to his trousers to the tawny skin of his face fit him perfectly. It was his eyes, though, that Paz focused on the most, because they were Caitlin Strong’s eyes, brimming with the same fury, resolve, and intensity. He was certain that somewhere in this picture, in this man, he’d find the source of his fascination with Caitlin Strong, as well as the means to save her.

  “Well, Mr. Paz,” R.R. Parsons continued, “what is it I can tell you about old Earl to help save somebody’s life?”

  “Everything,” Paz told him.

  26

  SWEETWATER, TEXAS; 1931

  Earl Strong had wasted no time in letting the miscreants, roustabouts, and derelicts gathered in Sweetwater know who was in charge. The next morning he was seen riding up and down the town’s lone ruddy, muck-ridden commercial thoroughfare atop a black horse, his twin pearl-handled revolvers laced to his hip and an old lever-action Winchester slung through a slat in the saddle.

  Hollis Tyree couldn’t believe how much the attitude of the motley assortment of humanity drawn to Sweetwater had changed at one man’s hand and reputation. Those who’d never heard of Texas Ranger Earl Strong before need only lay an ear open to hear more than they wanted about the exploits that had spread his name across the entire state. If he wasn’t the toughest, most respected man in Texas, he came very close.

  Tyree heard the heavy pounding of hoofbeats while he patrolled the street atop the wood-plank sidewalk, turning to see Earl Strong looming over him, silhouetted by sunlight. The horse had sprayed mud onto Tyree’s trousers, a few flecks splattering his face as well.

  “Morning, Constable.”

  “Morning, Ranger Strong.”

  “Call me Earl, Constable.”

  “Thank you, Ranger Earl.”

  “Never did ask you about the location of the town jail.”

  “Town don’t have one, sir.”

  “Don’t have one?”

  “Never saw the need before.”

  “Well, that puts us in a bit of pickle now, don’t it?”

  But not for long. Earl commandeered the abandoned town church and instructed Hollis Tyree to chop holes in the rotting wood floor.

  “Be back presently,” Earl told him, after scratching the places where he wanted the holes with a knife. “Gonna fetch us some chain.”

  He returned not only with a hundred-foot heavy steel chain salvaged from the work yard, but also a hundred or so trace chains to connect up with it and padlocks to go with them. Jack Rawlins was the first prisoner to be rigged to the chain by affixing the trace around his neck with a padlock and then fastening it to a section of the hundred feet of steel he’d already looped through the chopped holes. In and out, in and out, in and out . . .

  A week into Earl’s stay in Sweetwater, there were forty men attached to one end of the chain and six women to the other. Earl showed the ladies kindness by looping the trace chains around their ankles instead of throats. The odor was a mix of rank bodies, putrefied sweat, and the residue of unwashed pails the prisoners used for a commode.

  “Watch this, Constable,” Earl told Hollis Tyree when a fresh trio of bearded undesirables appeared in town, making no secret of their guns.

  And Tyree did just that as Earl worked his horse to a halt sideways before the new arrivals, blocking their path. “Welcome to Sweetwater, gentlemen. Now show me your hands.”

  The men saw no reason not to hold their hands up where Earl Strong could see them.

  “Just like I figured,” he said. “You got smooth skin, no calluses, and there’s no dirt under your fingernails. Means you’re not field workers; only other reason you’d come to a godforsaken place like this is if you’re a pimp, gambler, petty thug, or just an old-fashioned outlaw looking to hole up for a while. So to spare us all the trouble, I’m placing you under arrest and putting you on the chain.”

  “Who the hell you think you are?” demanded one, spitting a thick wad of tobacco near the front hoof of Earl’s steed.

  “Texas Ranger Earl Strong. Any other questions?”

  The men looked at one another, perhaps in search of their bravado.

  “We ain’t done nothing, Ranger,” another of them protested.

  “But you will, that’s for sure. Could be you’re stickup men or contract killers and you’ve come here to make some kind of mischief and mayhem and behave in a form of unlawful manner that won’t be tolerated. So you boys should thank me for doing you all a favor.”

  The men looked at one another again before Earl continued.

  “See, by putting you on the chain, I won’t have to shoot you.”

  Hollis Tyree watched as Sweetwater continued to fill up. With the rooming houses renting out hall space, cities of tents and sleeping bags continued to appear, stretching the town’s bursting borders. Two more Rangers joined Earl to keep things even from the law’s perspective and they stayed under control, until Tyree summoned him to the office of an overwhelmed local doctor pushed back off the wagon by the influx of business.

  “Doc sent for me soon as he did the examination,” Tyree told Earl, holding the door of a room open for him. “Wanted you to see what they done to the poor girl for yourself.”

  Earl entered the room ahead of him and saw a young Mexican woman with fair skin and black hair seated on the exam table trembling from fear and pain. She wore a flimsy white dress with a torn strap and a line of dirt the size of a man’s hand from her breasts down through her torso. One of her arms was in a sling and her right knee was wrapped tightly. Her right jaw was swollen red and hung lower than her left. Her eyes were wide and terrified. Black eyes, Earl noted, the same shade as her hair. Her teeth were chattering, face squeezing into a taut grimace every time a bolt of pain surged through her. Earl figured her for eighteen, nineteen at the most.

  “I know how you feel about violence against women, Ranger Earl,” Tyree said from behind him.

  Earl removed his Stetson and walked up close to the girl. “Who did this to you?”

  When she didn’t respond, Earl repeated the question in Spanish. The woman’s eyes flickered, but she made no response.

  “It hurts to talk, don’t it?”

  The young woman nodded.

  “Don’t try talking then. Just nod or shake your head. Okay?”

  The young woman nodded.

  “That’s fine,” Earl said. “You’re being forced into serving the needs of men, is that right?”

  A nod.

  “And the sumbitches who did the forcing are the same ones who messed up your face and arm, aren’t they?”

  Another nod before the young woman looked past Earl now, as if there might be something better waiting for her beyond a wall papered with a human anatomy poster and generic eye-test chart.

  “And this happened down at the railroad freight yard where they turned those rusted cars into bedrooms with red lights flashing over their doorways, right?”

  The young woman nodded, just a single time before her face filled with fear again.

  “You did just fine,” Earl told her, smoothing a hand down the unswollen side of her soiled face, her cheek clammy to his touch. “I’d like to know your name if you don’t mind telling me.”

  “Juanita,” the girl managed. “Juanita Rojas.”

  “Well, Juanita, nobody’s gonna lay a hand on you in this town again, and that’s a promise.”

  Bobby Parsons followed Earl Strong to the freight yard that night. He walked there across town with a fellow Ranger on either side of him. They carried 1911 model .45 caliber pistols and twelve-gauge shotguns, Earl content with his pearl-handled revolvers. The lawlessness that had been on the verge of consuming all of Sweetwater was now isolated to the freight yard. Earl tolerated it because the yard was outside proper town limits, and he figured letting
the men think they were getting away with something kept them from trying to get away with more. He looked on the freight yard as a cesspit where all the shit went when you flushed and, one way or another, it had to collect somewhere.

  Earl arrived just as a hulking man who was so fat it took two strung-together belts to hold up his pants was taking a leather belt to a woman who kept giving him lip in Spanish no matter how much he struck her. Her face was an unrecognizable patchwork of welts. The fat man wheezed with each strike, breathless from an effort that left sweat streaming down his face and turning his blue shirt black with moisture.

  “That’ll be enough!” Earl bellowed.

  “You mind your business!” the fat man shot back, raising his belt anew as the woman finally crumpled to the tracks.

  Earl shot the belt out of his hand, the sting from the vibration so bad it flopped uselessly to the fat man’s side.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “The man who’s gonna shoot you dead if you give me the slightest provocation.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Fattest piece of dung I ever laid eyes on in my life.”

  The Rangers on either side of Earl couldn’t help but laugh. Neither could Bobby Parsons from his position peeking out from behind a rusted freight car.

  “I come from Chicago,” the fat man said. “Ever heard of it?”

  “City somewheres north of Dallas. I don’t get out much.”

  “How about Al Capone? You heard of him?”

  The other Rangers stiffened. Earl took a few steps closer to the fat man, pistol angled low now.

  “ ’Cause I work for him,” the fat man continued, sensing a weakness.

  “Everyone in this here yard works for him. Chicago runs this yard. You need to know that, yokel.”

  “Yokel?”

  “G-men are no match for us up in Chicago and you’re no match for us down here.”

  “That remains to be seen, don’t it?” Earl said. “You got a family, yokel? Mr. Capone takes special pleasure in hurting families.”

  Earl snapped his gun into firing position and shot the fat man in the leg. He went down with a force that seemed to shake the earth, the woman struggling to her feet and limping away.

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Earl came forward and stood over him. “Answer is no, I don’t have a family. I shot you just for the implication. And if you imply anything of the sort again, it’ll earn you another bullet.”

  The stench rising off the fat man was worse than that of the church-turned-jail. “This ain’t over, yokel!” the fat man rasped. “Tomorrow I’m sending for an army!”

  Earl started to walk off.

  “The wrath of Chicago is gonna be brought upon you until you wish you were never born!”

  Earl looked back at him one last time, longing for one of the cigars wedged in his shirt’s lapel pocket. “You tell ’em to bring their own coffins or I’ll charge Mr. Capone for the wood.”

  Back in town, Earl made straight for the telegraph office. Puffing at last on his cigar, he wrote out his message to Austin slowly, making sure Fred Hatchings would be able to read all the lettering.

  “What’s this?” Hatchings asked anyway.

  “B-A-R. All capitalized. You gotta send it exactly that way.”

  “Says two of them here.”

  “That’s what I need.”

  Hatchings began tapping out Earl’s message. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Tell ’em to get the damn things here double quick.”

  27

  SWEETWATER, TEXAS; THE PRESENT

  “B-A-R,” Paz repeated, whimsical smile stretched across his face.

  “That’s what I heard the next day. Mean something to you?”

  “It does indeed. Tell me more about this woman.”

  “Juanita Rojas—that was her name,” R.R. Parsons told him, his eyes all misty and dreamlike from the memories the tale had stoked. “Earl sat up with her all night, holding her hand so she knew she’d be safe. Juanita was pretty busted up, all right, but once the swelling went down, I don’t think I ever saw a more beautiful woman. Earl Strong,” Parsons said reflectively. “Yup, he sure was something.”

  “What else can you tell me about Juanita Rojas?”

  “Nothing, other than the fact she was from Mexico, because that was where all the whores the Chicago Outfit brought in were from.”

  “Did she go back home?”

  Parsons shrugged. “Don’t rightly know, mister. See—”

  “What about Al Capone?” Paz asked, eager to hear more. “Did more men show up as promised?”

  “You didn’t let me finish, mister. Couple days after Earl saved Juanita Rojas’s life, my parents fled town and dragged me along. We didn’t come back until Earl was long gone and Sweetwater was back to being a real town again, ’cept it had paved streets by then paid for with oil money.”

  “You must’ve heard something.”

  “Sure, lots of things. But never could figure out what was true and what wasn’t. A war did come, I can tell you that much, and Earl didn’t run from it neither. What more there is, you’ll have to find it somewhere else, I’m afraid.” He gave Paz a long look, letting his eyes wash over him. “You look like you could have been fit for those times, a match for Earl Strong even. Say, how ’bout I have the kitchen fix you a steak? There’s lots more to tell about those days none’ve heard in quite a while now.”

  Paz saw the longing in the old man’s eyes. “I think I’d like that,” he said. “Muchos gracias.”

  “I’m the one should be doing the thanking,” said Parsons. “You wanna know the rest of what happened when Al Capone’s boys hit town, I’d recommend stopping at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame in Waco. But if you don’t mind me asking, mister, what’s a Mexican whore got to do with this life-and-death matter of yours?”

  Before Paz could respond, he saw the sheriff’s deputy enter the restaurant and head straight to the table he was sharing with R.R. Parsons. The deputy’s expression had gone dour and he carried himself stiffly, as if weighed down by some invisible burden strapped to his shoulders.

  “Something wrong, ayudante?” Paz asked him.

  “There are some men in town asking about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Not by name, just description. Whole carload of them. Mexicans, I think.” The deputy took off his hat and tried to look stronger than he was. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what really brought you here, but whatever it is we don’t want it in Sweetwater. So I’d be obliged if you could leave town before those Mexicans find you.”

  So the priest had been right; the Juárez cartel, whose drugs Paz had destroyed, had tracked him here. His nature told him to make a stand, confront the Mexicans now to send a message to their employers. But a bloodbath in a sleepy little town like Sweetwater would undoubtedly claim innocent lives and attract the kind of attention Paz could ill afford. Not if he wanted to stay on the trail of the information he needed to save Caitlin Strong as well.

  Paz rose slowly, eyes on the windows to see if the Mexicans were waiting outside. “I guess I’ll have to take a rain check on that steak,” he told R.R. Parsons. “Thank you for your concern, ayudante. You won’t be seeing me again.”

  28

  EL PASO; THE PRESENT

  Dr. Alvin Lamb was sipping his beer, alone in a honky-tonk bar called the Highpoint, when the door opened and Frank Branca Jr. entered accompanied by a new pair of bodyguards. Branca dispatched the men toward a table by the old-fashioned jukebox and joined Lamb at his table, flipping the chair around so he could straddle it. Country music, Hank Williams he thought, rose through unseen speakers, just soft enough to provide background he didn’t have to raise his voice over.

  “Nice to see you, Professor. Hey, the swelling went down.”

  Lamb pushed his mug aside.

  “Something wrong with the brew? You want me to get you another?”

  Branca had started to look for a
waitress when Lamb’s voice called back his attention. “I don’t drink. Just figured I was supposed to order something as long as I was here.”

  “Lots of things people are supposed to do they don’t always.”

  Branca eased himself further over the chair back. He was wearing too much aftershave, enough to unsettle Lamb’s already queasy stomach. “Like making good on their gambling debts.”

  “That’s why I called, Mr. Branca.”

  “You said what you had for me was bigger than money. Fucking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  “Bigger than that too,” Lamb said, placing a manila envelope he’d been sitting on atop the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “A lab report from the site in Tunga County I’ve been working for Hollis Tyree. He’s got no idea of its contents.”

  Branca’s face crinkled in displeasure, marring his otherwise smooth features. “What the fuck that’s supposed to mean?”

  “Read it and you’ll see, Mr. Branca.”

  “I look like a scientist to you?”

  “You don’t have to be. Trust me on that.”

  “Trust a man who’s into me for twenty large plus the vig, interest building up every day? Now why would I want to do that?”

  With a trembling hand, Lamb slid the envelope still damp with the moisture shed from the seat of his pants toward Frank Branca Jr. “Because this is gonna make us even.”

  29

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  Caitlin found Marianna Silvaro in Ruby’s Diner down the block from the State of Texas Department of Health and Human Services, on Brady Boulevard where her office was located. She wasn’t hard to spot, given Cort Wesley’s description, seated at the counter alternating between her coffee and a homemade Danish pastry the size of a shoe box, the stool barely large enough to accommodate her bulk.

  “Ms. Silvaro?”

  The woman spun slightly, her stool creaking as she regarded Caitlin’s badge and face at the same time. “What can I do for you, Ranger?”